Sympathy for the Devil
by Lunatic
Summary: Sands has spent the last 2 weeks after the Day of Dead in hiding. Now he's forced to get out. Will he survive the cartels, El, the responsibility and worst of all... will he survive himself?
1. Chapter 1

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Disclaimer: I do not own, Robert Rodriguez, Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas do. 

Author's Note: This is my first fanfic in the fandom of Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Mistakes are all blamed on me and I would appreciate it if people would point those out for me. The very first line of this fic is taken from Dreamcatcher_ a novel written by Stephen King. _

Reviews are very much appreciated, cause I'm a little insecure about this. Agent Sands is a very fascinating, but difficult person to write. 

A very big hug to my sweet beta hippediva

[ bla ] _= Spanish_

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Sympathy for the Devil 

1. 

Suicide had a voice. He had learned that very soon. It was a friendly and tender voice that just continued talking and commenting on every day life. It would probably keep on talking even if you were standing on some fucking high building, preparing to jump and looking down to see the last thing you would se before you would start to dance in hell's fire. Although… maybe looking wasn't a good word in this context. Not when your name was Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. 

__

"Sheldon? Why don't you pull the trigger?" 

He really started to hate his first name. He hadn't done so before, although he had never really liked it either. He has found himself in this very same position already a hundred times before in the past 2 weeks, after the Day of the Dead. His back against the cold wall of his new 'home' and his gun pressed at the temple of his face, his finger steady on the trigger. 

__

"Shel-don?" Suicide singsongs his name now. 

The ironic thing was that the voice was the only reason he hadn't killed himself yet. _He_ wanted to be in control and it would be his decision if _he_ pulled the trigger, not Suicide's. 

"Fuck you!" Sands whispers and throws the gun away from him, taking close attention to the sound of the gun falling down. He would probably need it again later today to start this whole 'pressing gun to temple' thing all over again. 

__

"Are you afraid, Sheldon?" 

"Shut up," he whispers, but he doesn't mean it. He was scared, but not for something as ridiculous as death. He was scared of the silence. The silence that would follow after Suicide would shut up. He cursed it and one night during these two weeks, he had screamed at it until his voice was hoarse, but in fact he was happy it was there. At least it kept his mind busy, so that he would not start to think about other things. Things like Dr. Guevara for instance. Or eyes. 

Around two weeks ago, it was the Day of the Dead and Sands knew for sure that he had almost joined the 'celebration' of that. If it hadn't been for the Kid. The bubblegum kid with his bike. First because of what the kid had said. 

[ Are you alright? ] 

[ I don't know. ] 

[ You will be. ] 

Such a trust in Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. That was not something that happened very often. And then the Kid had helped him even more. He had known that he wasn't safe in the place he was now. Besides the fact that he was feeling warm blood leaping out of his body in more places that he had ever dreamed and therefore he was not really good at defending himself, he had also the CIA to consider about. The CIA wasn't stupid, either. Of course they had been stupid to let him become an Agent in the first place, but even they weren't _that_ stupid. They would know that he had worked for himself and for himself only. They would know. And they would hunt him down. They would be afraid that he would sell information to cartels about them. But that wasn't Sands' style. He never even considered it, simply because it didn't interested him at all. He never bothered with finding out any CIA secrets, although he was convinced that he could have done it. 

The Kid had brought him to the same place where he was now. And then it had started. Slowly the drugs that Guevara had gave him started to wear of. Very slowly and very sneaky, like a sliding snake in high, dark grass. Sands hadn't even noticed it, that is, until he had turned his head to listen closely to the sounds of this new location. Immediately the world had exploded around him and he had let out one hoarse scream before losing consciousness. 

When he woke again he had felt a small hand cleaning his wounds and he had immediately flinched away, letting another firework explode in his head. Biting his lip hard to avoid fainting, he had focused and figured out it was the Kid once again, before he has slowly drifted off again to a world of silence. 

The second time he woke up, he had again felt a pair of hands, but this time it was different. Immediately he had backed away and searched for his gun, but it wasn't there. Before he could panic he had heard the voice of the Kid again. 

"Señor? Don't panic. I got you a doctor." 

This hadn't actually helped to ease his mood. If there was one person who had bad memories about doctors it would have been Sands. He had started to crawl away, ignoring the pain in his head, his 'eyes' and the rest of his body until he painfully hit the wall. 

" Señor?" this time it was another voice. " Señor? I can't help you like this, just stay still or I'll go." 

Then Sands had heard it. He heard it in the man's voice. This was a _real_ doctor. He could hear it in the bored tone in the voice of this man, a voice that said 'I don't give a damn if you die very painfully right now on this very moment, but the Kid has paid me so I'll pretend I'll do my job'. And that was exactly the kind of thing that Sands wanted to hear. This was not some kind of sick person that would cut off his balls if he had the change, but just a doctor who had come used to take care of patients with strange wounds that they couldn't explain. A doctor that was used to a live filled with drug cartels in Mexico. He would bet that the doctor hadn't even flinched when he had figured out what caused the blood on his face. And then he had relaxed. He hadn't spoken a word and he had let the hands of the doctor go over his body, checking for any hidden wounds or broken bones. The hands were emotionless and only doing their work without thinking and slowly Sands had dozed off. 

The next time he woke up, his new life had started. The doctor was gone and Sands felt rather well, at least, as well as you can feel with some extra holes in your body and your eyes in some fucked up jar or something like that. He had been alone and slowly he had started to discover his new home. He started with feeling the four walls. He had found only one window with broken glass on which he cut open one of his fingers. The window was on the same height as the ground outside, so that soon Sands came to the conclusion that he was spending his time in somebody's cellar. He had found the door, but he hadn't gone outside. He first wanted to be in a perfect condition again before doing that. The ground in the cellar was dirty, just like most cellars. In one corner there was lying a pile of wood or maybe parts of furniture: Sands couldn't tell. He also found something that made him really happy: his guns. He almost felt like he could stand up against the entire world once again. 

After his little expedition he had been exhausted and nestled himself in a as comfortable position as possible. That was the moment that Suicide had for the first time started to talk to him. Sands had enough experience to find out that this voice was nothing more than a voice in his head. He remembered it from when he was a young and happy boy. Odd to imagine that, but that was what he once had been. A young boy with an imaginary friend. Millions of kids all over the world had one, but his friend had been different. And now it spoke to him again, with only one change. This time it was Suicide and not Larry, his imaginary friend, who spoke. 

Later the Kid had come back, bringing some food along with him and Sands started to get used to his new situation. He learned how to focus on his hearing and how he could hear the Kid come nearing seconds before the Kid actually entered the room. Sands could even walk around in his cellar without tripping over the dirt. And Sands had learned to ignore Suicide when needed. And so the days went by. The Kid came with food and they talked a little. Most of the time it was the Kid who was talking and Sands who was dozing off, often sending the Kid away with a "Fuck off". He didn't know why the Kid was doing what he was doing, but he suspected that he had given the Kid so much money when he first had helped him that the Kid had grown attached to him. He didn't care. The rest of the time Sands spent sleeping, listening to Suicide, pressing a gun at his temple and throwing it away after a while and listening to the world outside him. So he started to know one other person. A person with a real name instead of the Kid. Lucette. 

Everyday, Sands suspected around 2 pm, Lucette went outside near 'his' cellar. She was almost always singing and she always sang the same song. Sands really wondered what Mick Jagger would say if he would hear this version of Sympathy for the Devil. 

"Please allow me to introduce myself 

I'm a man of wealth and taste 

I've been around for some long, long years 

Stole many man's soul and hmmm 

I was round when Jesus Christ 

Had his hmmmmmmmm 

Made damn sure that hmmm" 

"She really needs to buy herself a CD or at least learn the text properly," muttered Sands out loud. 

"Who whooo, whoo whooo..." 

It was already driving Sands crazy and the worst thing was he had caught himself humming the same damn song. Lucette sang it in a high voice only girls can have and in a very 'sympathetic' way as if she really would like the Devil himself. Sands figured that she was a young adult when he heard the tone of her voice, although at times she sounded a lot younger. It was a real mystery what this young woman would do outside everyday for such a long time, only singing this goddamn song and sometimes softly muttering to herself. 

At what Sands thought would be the end of the day, Lucette's singing would be interrupted by another woman's voice. This one sounding a lot older. 

"Lucette! Eating time, come inside, dear." 

That's how he knew the young woman's name. The strangest thing of it all was that the older woman (probably grandmother, as Sands thought) spoke English with a very heavy Spanish accent. Now why would somebody in Mexico talk English? So Sands had figured that Lucette would probably be American or from another English-speaking country, and she obviously didn't speak Spanish. Or at least not well. Or maybe she just didn't speak it, like he did most of the time. It gave Sands a good feeling that at least his CIA senses still worked. 

Maybe an hour later, the Kid brought him his food and he had survived yet another fucking day. Sands really wondered what he was going to do. Of course he knew that this couldn't go on forever, but he had the strange feeling that he wouldn't mind if it could. He wasn't sure if he ever wanted to go outside his cellar again. It was his world now. And who would bother with a blinded ex-agent anyway? He would probably walk under a car the second he went outside anyway. 

And so there he was now. He was sitting with his back against the wall and his face in the glimpse of sunlight that warmed the cellar with his sunglasses on. He had officially vowed to never take of those things again in his life. Lucette was singing outside and everything was perfect. Suicide had decided to shut up for the moment, to think of new plans to finally trick him into pulling the trigger, but for the moment Sands really didn't care. 

"Hmmmmmm… reached bombay. 

Please to meet you 

Hope you guess my name… yeah 

But what's puz--- Berney?" 

Sands had almost dozed off with the sound of Lucette's, not so perfect, but not so terrible either, singing voice in the background when she stopped singing. 

"Berney? Where are you?" '

Who the hell is Berney?' thought Sands. 'Her brother? Lover? Maybe even her goddamn son?' Sands wouldn't be surprised with any of these options. 

"Berney!" Sands heard how Lucette moved away from him still yelling the name of this person. 

"Berney! Come here!" 

Then he heard her come back. And then he heard something he didn't like that made him very much awake at the very moment. She came closer and closer. Closer than she had ever been to his cellar. 

"Berney? Please?" Lucette sounded impatient. "It's no time to play now! Granny would be mad!" 

Then Sands heard something that made his heart skip a beat. She was going to enter his home. She was going to discover him! A strange panic came over him. He didn't want to be seen! He would probably scare her away anyway, because he just knew he couldn't look good. He had always been a skinny person and he doubted he would have gained any weight after the Day of the Dead. And, how could he forget, he still had no fucking eyes and he couldn't imagine that his face looked very pleasant: even with his sunglasses. He crawled to the corner away from the window and made himself as small as possible, feeling ridiculous at the same time. As if Lucette would not see him if he made himself smaller! Slowly he heard the door open and Lucette entered the room. 

"Berney? Are you in here?" 


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I do now own; Robert Rodriguez, Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas do  
  
AN: Appologies for the late update, but my computer keeps screwing things up when I try to upload *keeps fingers crossed that it works now*  
  
Thanx to all who have reviewed, it really means a lot to me! And it's also good to see that there are more Stephen King lovers around ;)   
  
Question: is there something terrible important that I *need* to know before I write down El in chapter 4 (I haven't seen the other movies)?  
  
A big thank you to my wonderful beta Hippediva who gave me some very good suggestions with this chapter_  
  
  
**2.**  
  
As soon as Lucette had entered the cellar, Sands had been frozen to the spot, holding his breath, waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for the panic and screaming from the girl.  
  
But nothing happened. He heard Lucette walking and muttering, but that was it. No sign that she had noticed him or was scared. Just when Sands decided it was all a dream or one of Suicide's little tricks she spoke.  
  
"Oh… hello. Have you seen Berney?"  
  
It took a little while before his brains registered the question and Sands could almost hear Suicide snicker.   
  
"W-what?"  
  
"Have you seen Berney?" she repeated patiently.  
  
There was no sign at all that she was afraid or found it odd to find an unhealthy-looking man in a corner of the dirty cellar. And not the slightest indication that she was going to explain who the fuck Berney was.  
  
"Well," Sands cleared his throat, "That's a little hard for me to tell right now." As soon as these words left his lips, the irony hits him full force. He vaguely recalled saying something similar to the Kid once. It already seems years away.  
  
"O. Do you know what Granny said?"  
  
Sands was completely confused. This just couldn't be possible. This girl hadn't just say what his brains had registered. That was impossible. That simply _could not_ be happening. No one ever 'just' started a conversation with him. Always, people had wanted things from him. His mother had wanted him to become rich and successful, as long as he could take care of her. His dad had just wanted him to be invisible and, more importantly, his dad had just wanted to forget he even was there. The kids in school had always wanted silly things from him, like his homework assignments or they just wanted to beat the shit out of him because he had the annoying habit of being smarter than they were. Even within the CIA it had been like this. They only started a casual conversation with him when they wanted him to do some dirty work. Loner for life.  
  
_"Answer the girl, you fucker! ANSWER HER! I need a laugh once in a while. Especially after being around such a humourless fuck like you are."_  
  
"I've got no fucking clue," Sands answered in a voice that he didn't even know that it belonged to him.  
  
Lucette, however, didn't seem to notice this at all, or just simply decided to ignore it. "Granny said it's my own fault that Berney is lost all the time, but do you know what I think?"  
  
"No," still that unrecognisable voice. He could feel Lucette coming nearer to him and he tensed.  
  
"I think the fairies took him."  
  
Alright, this was it.   
  
Finally he had walked into the trap of insanity after being able to avoid it for such a long time. He had a new voice besides Suicide. Lucette. She couldn't be a real person. No real person in his right mind would start a conversation with _him_ about fairies.  
  
He laughed humourlessly. "Fairies?"   
  
What the fuck. If he was insane, he had better work on becoming the most insane fuck ever seen, and having conversations with voices definitely was high on the 'must do' list.  
  
"Yes," Lucette replied happily and Sands felt how she came even closer and than sat down next to him accidentally touching his arm while doing so.  
  
Wait! Hold on! Do you _feel_ voices in your head sitting down?  
  
"I think the fairies really like Berney and that's why they take him with them o nce in a while. Fairies do that you know, if they see somebody they like they might take that person with them. Hopefully they will take me with them once as well…"  
  
Sands hesitated for a moment, but than he reached out with his right hand and soon his hand found the soft fabric of a t-shirt or something like that. He let his hand move down and he soon felt the warm skin of a body and further down he found a bracelet and a hand with two rings around the fingers.  
  
"What are you doing?" Lucette still didn't sound scared by this invading of personal space, more just simply curious.  
  
"I wanted to see if you were real," Even Sands didn't know why he answered this question that honestly, but it was probably out of relief; relief that he once again had escaped out of the claws of insanity and that she was real.   
  
"But you can see me sitting next to you right?" It was still only honest curiosity and Sands was grateful for that. If he had heard anything else in the tone of her voice he had probably killed her and he didn't want to do that. Really he didn't, not because she was the only real person with a name that he knew right now and not because she was the person that helped him through the days. She and the Kid.  
  
"I can't." He wasn't in the mood to explain that 'looking' with your eyes cut out of your damned skull was a rather impossible task.  
  
"Maybe you should take your sunglasses off? It's too dark to wear them in here."  
  
He was going to kill her. Fuck her. No one had the right to ask about his sunglasses. He heard how she moved her hand upwards as if she wanted to takeaway the sunglasses away and immediately he backed away like a frightened animal.  
  
_"Kill her! She's close to knowing your little secret, Sheldon. And while you're at it: kill yourself as well. She can't help you anymore if she's dead… No sane mind for you, buddy."_  
  
"No!" he moaned.  
  
"I'm sorry." This time Lucette sounded a bit scared as well, "I didn't want to scare you… or make you mad." The last part was added in a truly sad tone, which strangely hurt Sands as well.  
  
Sands calmed down. Lucette didn't know, she didn't suspect a thing. And she wasn't here either to cut his liver out or even better: take away his hearing. That would be something, now is it? He had to admit to himself that for a moment the thought flashed through his mind that this girl was not an inch better than Ajedrez with her 'fuck me now' eyes and her even more fucked up dad.  
  
"What's your name?" Lucette asked brightly. "My name is Lucette."  
  
"I know." Sands suddenly felt very tired. Maybe there was a little bit too much emotion in this day for his own liking.  
  
"Oh, do I know you then already?" This time she sounded insecure.  
  
"No. I heard that old lady- your grandmother call you like that."  
  
"Oh. What's your name?"  
  
_"Yes, Sheldon. Tell her your name. Maybe there will be some soul in this world who would care if you shoot yourself. At least she deserves a name then."_  
  
"Sands." No Sheldon Jeffrey; Suicide had taken care of that.  
  
"What a silly name."  
  
This time Sands laughed; a real laugh, not a faked one. "Yeah, I guess you can say that."  
  
"Is that your real name?" What had happened only seconds ago seems to be forgotten.  
  
"Well, part of it. I just don't like the rest of my name anymore."  
  
"I like my name. I only don't like it when Granny calls me Lucette Maria Marquez. But she only calls me like that when she's really angry."  
  
"Well… Lucette is a nice name," and then Sands decided to ask a question himself. If Lucette was allowed to act this spontaneous he at least could try it as well. It had been haunting him ever since he first heard her singing and especially after the fairies he wanted to know it: her age. His CIA senses told him she was around 21 years old. Before he always had been very good in g uessing ages of the people around him, but he couldn't be sure anymore. Not in the mess he was right now and certainly not when this girl talked about fairies as if she actually believed in them.  
  
"How old are you?"  
  
Lucette was silent for a little while as if she really had to think deeply about this question. "Granny says that I'm 21."  
  
Good. _Very_ good indeed. It started to look like that this whole mess hadn't influenced him as much as he first thought. It was only the way she answered him that bothered him. 'Granny says…' Isn't your age something that most people just know? Without noticing he does so, Sands shook his head. Lucette had to be one of those people that were very hard to read, but he would succeed. He always did.  
  
"Granny also says that fairies don't exist."  
  
"True," Sands had never been the man of diplomatic answers. Most of the time he was just honest, unless a good lie was needed to be in control, than he turned into the best liar around. Fairies and all the other fairytale stuff was something that never interested him. There was only one 'fantasy' like thing that he liked… or in fact _loved_: Oz. He had been a young boy, around 8 years old, and he had been sick at home. His dad was at his work and after that he would probably end up in the bed of some blond fucktoy and his mother had left the house to get seriously drunk in some bar and she probably end up in the bed of another fucktoy as well.  
  
He had been alone. As usual. And he had turned on the television. As soon as he had seen Dorothy he had fallen in love with her. When he got older he, of course, had noted that it wasn't _real_, but that hadn't bothered him in the least. He had started to follow the career of 'his' Dorothy and if he remembered well, he had been reading a biography about her life not so long ago.   
  
Sands cursed out loud. That was again something he would never finish. The very first money he had earned as a young boy he had spent on some books about Oz and he remembered well that the very first videotape he had bought had been the one from the Wizard of Oz.  
  
"Sands? Are you mad?"  
  
Sands sighs. "No I'm not mad. I just thought of some memories. And about Oz."  
  
"Oz?"  
  
Sands shrugs. "You are not going to tell me that you've never heard of Oz?" As far as he knew every annoying little fuck of a kid had seen that movie.  
  
"N-no," Lucette sounded really insecure now, but Sands decided to ignore that for the moment. And then he started to tell her. About Dorothy and her little dog Toto. About the yellow brick road and Dorothy's friends: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and of course the Cowardly Lion. He told her about the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz himself. He talked more than he had in months; maybe even in years, and he doesn't even notice it. Lucette doesn't interrupt him once until the sound of another voice interrupted his story.  
  
"Lucette?! Eating time!"  
  
"I have to go," Sands could feel how she stood up, almost immediately missing the warmth of her body next to his. "Bye!"  
  
"Bye kid… and Lucette?" He suddenly thinks of something. "Don't tell anyone about me or that you found me in here, okay?"  
  
"It's a secret?" She sounds almost happy about that.  
  
"Yeah. A secret."  
  
"Okay."  
  
And than she left him and Sands was silent. An hour later, the Kid arrived) with some food for him and, for once, Sands actually took part of the conversation. When the Kid left, Sands started to doze off and the last thing he heard before he finally fell asleep is Suicide.  
  
_"Oz… you really have a sick mind, Sheldon."_  
  



End file.
